Shi Bai frowned, his eyes fixed straight ahead: "When your parents borrowed money from the Pang family, they had already decided to marry you off to Pang Er. This is your fate, and no one can save you!"
Chuan Miao laughed and cried at the same time: "Shi Bai, Dr. Shi, you are a doctor, carrying your medicine box every day to heal the sick and save lives. Do you doctors even have any concept of fate?"
Shi Bai's tense face was devoid of color, and his clenched hands loosened and clenched again.
"I only save sick people."
"I am a sick person, but I am sick in my heart. Haven't I made it obvious enough to you? You know I admire you, you know I like you, but you don't dare to look at me, don't dare to accept me, and don't even dare to speak up for me when I need you!" Chuan Miao's suppressed grief was hard to contain, and she became more and more agitated as she spoke, until she almost lost her voice in the end.
"You are in charge of your own life; no one can save you."
"Dr. Shi, you're just a doctor, a heartless doctor!"
After saying that, Chuan Miao ran away crying.
Shi Bai stood there for a while before finally walking home.
Back home, he casually walked into the house and analyzed some lost prescriptions from ancient books with Li Ying.
That night, a series of urgent knocks on the door woke everyone up.
Everyone got up and went out to see what had happened.
In the courtyard, besides Chuanmiao's father, there was a group of villagers carrying torches, led by Pang Er's father, Pang Da.
"Dr. Shi, do you know where Chuanmiao went?"
Chuan Miao's father asked anxiously.
Shi Bai remained calm: "I don't know."
"Dr. Shi, you are a doctor respected by everyone in our village. What did you say to Chuan Miao when she stopped you during the day?" Pang Da questioned with a dark face.
He suspected that Shi Bai had said something to Chuan Miao, which gave Chuan Miao the courage to run away.
"I didn't say anything." Shi Bai didn't think he had done anything wrong. He was just telling Chuan Miao that she was in charge of her own life and that no one could save her.
"You must have said something, otherwise she would never have dared to run away!" Pang Da had long disliked Shi Bai, and pointed at Shi Bai's nose: "Let me tell you, if my daughter-in-law is gone, and if my son doesn't come back to life, you will have to be buried with our family!"
He waved his hand, and everyone followed Pang Da to find the person.
Chuanmiao's father was still pleading, "Dr. Shi, please tell me, where did Chuanmiao go!"
Shi Bai glanced at Chuan Miao's father: "I said I don't know, and I just don't know."
After saying that, he turned around, went back to his room, and closed the door.
It was said that Miao's father stomped his foot and left.
Aunt Hong sighed, and Li Ying followed her back to her room.
"I don't know when it started, but Shi Bai has become such a cold person."
"Aunt Hong, Second Brother should have his own ideas."
Aunt Hong sat down, stroking the clothes of Shi Bai's father on the table, tears welling up in her eyes.
"Things in this world are always like this, they can never be perfect. I entered the Shi family at the age of fourteen and became a child bride. Shi Bai's father was an educated man who told me that a man could only marry one wife in the future, and I was his only wife."
"Two days after our wedding, he joined the army. A month later, I found out I was pregnant, and I hoped every day that he would come back to see me and our child. But in the end..."
Aunt Hong choked back tears as she said, "In the end, all that came back was his cold, hard list of the dead. I promised him I would raise Shi Bai, watch him get married and have children, and then I would consider myself to have fulfilled my mission and done right by Shi Bai's father. But Shi Bai... he's over thirty, and he still refuses to get married..."
As Li Ying listened to Aunt Hong recount the past over and over again, the most frequent topic being Shi Bai's marriage and children, which was her ultimate wish.
"Aunt Hong."
Aunt Hong held Li Ying's hand: "Child, your second senior brother listens to you the most. Please help Aunt Hong persuade him to get married and have children as soon as possible. I'm afraid that one day when I'm gone, I won't be able to close my eyes in peace."
Li Ying held Aunt Hong's hand; her hand was icy cold and lifeless.
Li Ying subconsciously reached out and touched Aunt Hong's pulse, and immediately gasped.
"Aunt Hong, you..."
"I'm fine, I'm perfectly fine." Aunt Hong said, pulling her hand back, carrying Shi Bai's father's clothes to the bedside, and lying down with the clothes in her arms.
Looking at Aunt Hong on the bed, Li Ying felt an indescribable heartache. For so many years, she had been living like a walking corpse, relying on the clothes left by her second senior brother's father.
Such days might not seem like much to outsiders, but for her, they were pure torture, an ordeal that she endured every single moment of.
Early in the morning, the Pang family came to call Shi Bai to come to the Pang family to treat Pang Er.
"Junior brother, I'll go with you." Li Ying was worried. Looking at the sinister expressions on the faces of the people from the Pang family, she knew they were up to no good.
"It's alright, we're all neighbors here, you don't need to worry about me." Shi Bai hung up his medical kit and left with the Pang family.
Li Ying always had a sense of foreboding.
"Zhou Qi, let's go to the Pang family!"
"good!"
Li Ying took Zhou Qi out and asked him for directions to the Pang family's residence.
"Go upstairs, that's the house where the funeral is being held."
Holding a funeral?
Whose funeral is it for?
"Pang'er's son died this morning. Earlier, it was agreed that a wedding would be held today, with Chuan Miao to bring good luck to Pang Er. However, Chuan Miao ran away, and when Pang Er found out, he couldn't catch his breath and died of anger. Now, Chuan Miao has been caught and brought back. I think Pang Er is determined to make Chuan Miao marry his son, even if it's a ghost marriage."
After listening to the kind villagers, Li Ying suddenly realized something and said to Zhou Qi, "Let's hurry over there, Second Brother is in danger!"
Li Ying and Zhou Qi quickly walked towards the Pang family's residence. Sure enough, when they arrived, Pang Da was having Shi Bai tied up.
In the Pang family's courtyard, there were several trees. On one of the trees was Chuanmiao, who had been found. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes were in disarray, and her mouth was bound with cloth. She could only make muffled sobs, and tears streamed down her face, wetting her eyes.
Shi Bai was tied to another tree.
"Pang Da, you're treating human life like dirt!"
Pang Da gritted his teeth: "Shi Bai, you're a doctor! You said you could cure my son, but he's dead. You're a quack! Our village absolutely cannot have a quack!"
"Yes! We can't keep quacks around!"
Burn him!
"Let him die!"
The crowd was indignant. Shi Bai struggled in vain, and then stopped. He knew that he could not escape this calamity, and as a descendant of a hero, he would never say a word against it.
"Fellow villagers, Shi Bai is not only unfit to be a doctor, but he also instigated Chuan Miao to escape, so he must have had an affair with Chuan Miao! Today I will act on behalf of Heaven and burn this adulterous couple to death to be buried with my son!" Pang Da said viciously.
Shi Bai opened his eyes and stared at Pang Da: "You say my medical skills are inadequate and I can't save your son, I accept that. But your claim that I have an affair with Chuan Miao is slander! Pang Da, you will be punished for slandering the orphan of a martyr!"
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